Early Evening Budget Update: House delays #pabudget debate until Thursday.

The state House is poised to begin debate as soon as Thursday on a $27.656 billion, no-tax hike budget plan that spares Pennsylvania’s state colleges and universities the deep cuts sought by Gov. Tom Corbett and provides public schools and public libraries with the same amount of taxpayer support they receive right now.

But a program that provides cash to assistance to nearly 70,000 of the state’s neediest citizens would come to an end.

Republican legislative leaders and the Corbett administration spent much of the day Thursday engaging in shuttle diplomacy to reach agreement on a host of issues that have been pulled into the spending plan’s orbit. Still under discussion is a package of school reform legislation and changes to the way the state pays for county-run human services programs.

The budget plan before lawmakers represents a $370 million increase over current spending and it appropriates $517 million more than Gov. Tom Corbett originally proposed in February. Healthier than expected revenue collections prompted lawmakers to undo some of Corbett’s proposed reductions.

Lawmakers and the administration have to complete their work before midnight on Saturday. And on Wednesday afternoon, there was cautious optimism that state government would meet that deadline for a second, consecutive year.

“I don’t foresee this going past Saturday,” House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said as he ducked into his Capitol offices around midday.

The proposed 2012-13 spending plan keeps the Accountability Block Grant and basic education subsidy at the same levels as this year for school districts. That means the final budget includes about $139 million more for public education than Corbett had initially proposed.

The decision to level-fund the public schools was similar to leaders in the post-Civil War South deciding to reconstruct at “post-Sherman levels,” Rep. Steve Samuelson, R-Northampton, said, referring to Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating march across Georgia in 1864.

Legislative leaders and the administration were still working to reach agreement on components of the administration’s school reform agenda, which includes changes in the way the charter schools are authorized and the expansion of a popular tax credit program for businesses that donate to private school scholarship organizations.

The House advanced teacher evaulation legislation, sponsored by Rep. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster, positioning it for a vote Thursday or Friday. The proposal would allow local districts to adopt their own evaluation tests from a menu of predetermined benchmarks with the approval of the state Department of Education.

If approved finally by lawmakers and signed into law by Corbett, Penn State would receive $227.7 million, up from the $163 million in Corbett's budget; Temple would receive $140 million, up from the $98 million Corbett proposed and Pitt would receive $136 million, up from the $95.2 million in the administration's spending document. Lincoln University would receive $11.1 million, which is what was proposed by Corbett and approved by the Senate.

The 14 schools in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, which include Kutztown and East Stroudsburg universities, would receive a $412.75 million appropriation for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Corbett had proposed cutting the schools' taxpayer subsidy by 20 percent to $330.2 million.

Budget negotiators were also still trying to reach agreement Tuesday on the administration's block grant proposal for county-run human services programs.

The proposal currently before lawmakers creates a pilot program that would allow 20 counties to opt into the block grants. The language crafted by the Corbett administration is a “work in progress,” House Speaker Sam Smith, R-Jefferson, said.

House Republicans were also pursuing language that would require welfare-funded non-profit groups to disclose the salaries of their senior executives and reveal other financial information.